According to the New York Times’ David Brooks, Republican hardliners against tax increases are turning the GOP into a “psychological protest” rather than a “normal political party.” Brooks is upset that after having forced Democrats to come far closer to their position on taxes and spending in order to cut a deal to extend the national debt ceiling, there is little chance the House majority will embrace what he considers to be “the deal of the century.” To Brooks, the Democrats’ offer on the debt ceiling is the “Mother of All No-Brainers,” and his anger at the GOP’s insistence that...

On Friday’s “NewsHour” on PBS, New York Times columnist David Brooks was critical of the notion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing a joint session of Congress due to the politicization of the state of Israel. “I think it’s a political disaster,” Brooks said. “It’s a substantive disaster for the state of Israel. I think it’s political disaster for Bibi Netanyahu back home, because they’re — most Israelis are really worried about the state of the relationship. It’s different than the past times, in part because it’s — as Mark said, it’s partisan now. Suddenly, Republicans are pro-Israel. And...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) JUDY WOODRUFF, PBS NEWSHOUR: At one of the Scott Walker events this week, former New York Mayor, David, Rudy Giuliani made a statement that has gotten a lot of attention. He basically — he talked about President Obama and said, “He wasn’t raised like we were,” talking to the group. He said, “He doesn’t love this country as we do.” It’s gotten a lot of attention. Do we — how big a deal is it? DAVID BROOKS: Well, it’s — you know, it’s unacceptable. You can’t say that. He doesn’t know that. It’s not true. It’s self-destructive. There’s sort...

Mitchell criticized Obama for leaning over backwards to be philosophical days after it was found out that a captured Jordanian pilot was burned alive by ISIS. "You don't use the word Crusades, number one, in any context right now," Mitchell said on NBC's Meet the Press today. "It's just it's too fraught. And the week after a pilot is burned alive, in a video shown, you don't lean over backwards to be philosophical about the sins of the fathers. You have to deal with the issue that's in front of you or don't deal with it at all." Oddly, Mitchell's...

A few months ago, Ezekiel Emanuel had an essay in The Atlantic saying that, all things considered, he’d prefer to die around age 75. He argued that he’d rather clock out with all his powers intact than endure a sad, feeble decline. The problem is that if Zeke dies at 75, he’ll likely be missing his happiest years. When researchers ask people to assess their own well-being, people in their 20s rate themselves highly. Then there’s a decline as people get sadder in middle age, bottoming out around age 50. But then happiness levels shoot up, so that old people...

Every party in opposition goes a little crazy. For Republicans in the early Obama era, insanity took the form of the Sarah Palin spasm. Veteran politicos took the former Alaska governor seriously as a national figure. Republican primary voters nominated the likes of Todd Akin, Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle. Glenn Beck seemed important enough to hold a big rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Fortunately, serious parties eventually pull back from the fever swamps. That’s what’s happening to the Republican Party. It has re-established itself as the nation’s dominant governing party. Republicans now control 69 of 99 state legislative bodies....

DAVID BROOKS: All the models say the Republicans are likely to take over the Senate. A couple of things, one, ticket-splitting. There used to be a lot of people ticket-splitting. They would vote for a Democrat up here, Republican down there, vice versa. That just happens less. One of the reasons is, the electorate is more educated. The more educated a person, the less likely their ticket splits. [SNIP] JUDY WOODRUFF: Is that what you’re seeing? DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I actually was hoping to give the same answer. You know, the Republicans will do well in the red states. They’re...

Friday on PBS's "News Hour," syndicated columnist Mark Shields pointed out, "among young Republicans, 61 percent of Republicans -- young Republicans under the age of 30 are in favor of same sex marriage." New York Times columnist David Brooks "applauded," the GOP for "doing absolutely the right thing in withdrawing" and letting the country have its way. Brooks said "I sort of applaud the minimalism here. Sometimes you let the country have its way and you don't try to determine the shape of the country, you sort of modestly step back and let the country figure out what it believes....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the weekÂ’s top news, including the struggle on Capitol Hill to find a resolution to the political division on the border crisis before Congress leaves for August recess, as well as how these events will affect the November election, plus the outlook for ending the war between Israel and Hamas. (AUDIO-AT-LINK)TRANSCRIPT JUDY WOODRUFF: In Washington, House Republicans were racing to pass something on the border crisis after a day of confusion and chaos on Capitol Hill Thursday. For a taste of what went on...

On Friday's broadcast of PBS's "NewsHour" New York Times columnist David Brooks and Creators Syndicate columnist Mark Shields took on the House Speaker John Boehner's lawsuit against the Obama administration, which alleges oversteps in executive authority by the Obama White House. Both acknowledged Boehner's gripe with the Obama administration had merit, but were skeptical of the lawsuit's chances. However, they both also took on the alternative offered by former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), which was to impeach President Barack Obama. Both dismissed that course of action as well, with Brooks calling it "cloud cuckoo land."

It’s now clear that the end of the Soviet Union heralded an era of democratic complacency. Without a rival system to test them, democratic governments have decayed across the globe.... [....] The answer is to use Lee Kuan Yew means to achieve Jeffersonian ends — to become less democratic at the national level in order to become more democratic at the local level. At the national level, American politics has become neurotically democratic. Politicians are campaigning all the time and can scarcely think beyond the news cycle. Legislators are terrified of offending this or that industry lobby, activist group or...

If it’s Friday on PBS, it’s time for “conservative” pundit David Brooks to bash the real conservatives. One of his favorite targets is Sen. Ted Cruz. On Valentine’s Day, PBS anchor Judy Woodruff announced “We watched this drama play out this week, David, in Congress, which ended up in the Senate with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas essentially hanging some of his fellow Republicans out to dry. What was he trying to accomplish, and did he -- did he do it?” Brooks shot back: “Nothing says Valentine’s Day like Senator Ted Cruz, our national aphrodisiac.” Then he said the conservatives...

New York Times columnist David Brooks said Sunday that President Barack Obama has a “manhood problem” in the Middle East. “[L]et’s face it,” he said. “Obama, whether deservedly or not, does have a — I’ll say it crudely, but a manhood problem in the Middle East. Is he tough enough to stand up to somebody like Assad, somebody like Putin?” “I think a lot of the rap is unfair, but certainly in the Middle East, there’s an assumption that he’s not tough,” Brooks added during a roundtable discussion on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness ,or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had madeÂ…Â” â€• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Odd, isnÂ’t it? I mean, just last Saturday,Â JDOlson posted the above quote from The Great Gatsby in the comments on Â“Who, Really, Won the Cold War?Â”Â and next thing you know, Big Guy shows up for Easter Services wearing his Gatsby suit (the 2013 Dicaprio version). He must...

<p>The silver 2001 BMW 535i roared through Adams Morgan, occasionally screeching over the sidewalks as my accountant wrenched both hands from the wheel for another toke at the weed-pipe. "Gadzooks, man!" I shouted. "Can you keep it together for another fifteen miles, or at least outside the District limits?" We were halfway through our 35 mile journey from Bethesda to Falls Church, with enough dangerous narcotics to stun a grizzly bear in the trunk: We'd started with nine ounces of weed, six rocks of crack, a sugar jar full of blow, 36 vicodin tablets, a cage filled with live Bolivian arrow toads, and two jars of ketamine. Plus two quarts of Beefeater gin, a case of Schlitz malt liquor, and a four ounce ball of Afghan hash: Surely enough to get this pair of degenerate drug addicts to Fall's Church. After that what man could say?</p>

You'd think it's nearly April Fools' Day, not Christmas. For four years running, I've closed the holiday season with a column saying “bah, humbug” to the year's worst op-eds. Christmas came early this year, thanks to perennial contender David Brooks. In Thursday's New York Times, Brooks offered a bold panacea for the problems of our time: We need to “Strengthen the Presidency.” It might strike you as counterintuitive to imagine that a president with a drone fleet, a “kill list,” dragnet databases of Americans' personal information and increasingly arbitrary authority over health care's one-sixth of the U.S. economy has too...

Besides Ross Douthat, is there anyone left on the New York Times op-ed page who doesn’t support benign dictatorship in the name of reducing congressional gridlock? Brooks evidently does. Tom Friedman, who’s been drooling on himself for years over China’s can-do model of government, certainly does. I don’t know if Timothy Egan’s ever squarely addressed the issue but a guy who thinks O’s big problem is that his speeches aren’t flowery enough must be open to persuasion.

<p>I sometimes get irked when I read columns by David Brooks. He’s sort of the token Republican at the New York Times, so he has a very important perch that could be used to educate an important audience about the harmful impact of excessive government.</p>

History didn’t end quite as soon as Francis Fukayama famously forecast. Every generation will face interesting times, it seems. But, David Brooks, the New York Times’ idea of a conservative, recently bid to team with Fukayama to seize a consolation prize.If you can’t end history, maybe you can end the American Constitutional order. That would be interesting, and pleasing to deep thinkers disappointed in Congress’s failure to pass a lot of awesome new laws. Brooks doesn’t exactly say so, but trashing the Constitution is what he advocates in his modestly titled piece: “Strengthen the Presidency.” Brooks sensitively builds his case...

On PBS’s “NewsHour” on Friday night, New York Times columnist David Brooks warned that Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and similar legislators’ rise to prominence threatens the traditional Republican Party. (Snip) “What’s going on in the House, and a bit in the Senate, too, is what you might call the rise of Ted Cruz-ism,” Brooks said. “And Ted Cruz, the senator from Canada through Texas, is basically not a legislator in the normal sense, doesn’t have an idea that he’s going to Congress to create coalitions, make alliances, and he is going to pass a lot of legislation. He’s going...

Have you ever wished that errant journalists could get their noses rubbed in their own absurdities and outright falsehoods like puppy dogs who make a mess? Well, if you had been watching Meet The Press today then you would have seen Congressman Raul Labrador of Idaho do just that to the New York Times house "conservative" David Brooks who was slapped down not once but twice. As you can see in this video and below the fold, Brooks didn't learn his lesson after being slapped down by Labrador for uttering absurdities about the Senate immigration bill. Labrador was forced to...

Over the past few decades, American society has been transformed in a fit of absence of mind. First, we’ve gone from a low immigrant nation to a high immigrant nation. If you grew up between 1950 and 1985, you grew up at a time when only about 5 percent or 6 percent of American residents were foreign born. Today, roughly 13 percent of American residents are foreign born, and we’re possibly heading to 15 percent. Moreover, up until now, America was primarily an outpost of European civilization. Between 1830 and 1880, 80 percent of the immigrants came from Northern and...

Tuesday marks the six month anniversary of Republican Ted Cruzâ€™s election to the United States Senate, but rather than the traditional honeymoon, the liberal media have gone on the attack against the Tea Party hero and emerging 2016 presidential candidate and his conservative beliefs. In their own liberal grassroots circles, leftists have even gone as far to openly hope for Cruzâ€™s death, as the Daily Kos screeched: â€śGive this man enough rope and a tree, please.â€ťÂ When former Bill Clinton political strategist James Carville, on Sunday, actually credited Cruz for being â€śtalented and fearless,â€ť it marked a rare moment when...

Today, liberalism seems to have changed. Today, many progressives seem to believe that government is the horse, the source of growth, job creation and prosperity. Capitalism is just a feeding trough that government can use to fuel its expansion. For an example of this new worldview, look at the budget produced by the Congressional Progressive Caucus last week. These Democrats try to boost economic growth with a gigantic $2.1 trillion increase in government spending — including a $450 billion public works initiative, a similar-size infrastructure program and $179 billion so states, too, can hire more government workers. Now, of course,...

Over the course of the 20th century, America built its welfare state. It was, by and large, a great achievement, expanding opportunity and security for millions. Unfortunately, as the population aged and health care costs surged, it became unaffordable. Public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product was around 38 percent in 1965. It is around 74 percent now. Debt could approach a ruinous 90 percent of G.D.P. in a decade... By 2025, entitlement spending and debt payments are projected to suck up all federal revenue... Ultimately, we should blame the American voters. The average Medicare couple pays $109,000...

New York Times columnist David Brooks made an astonishing observation about President Obama on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday. "Sometimes he governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

DAVID BROOKS, PBS NEWSHOUR: ....I think if we're going to control guns, we really have to do it massive. I think I'm all for getting rid of the assault weapons and machine guns and all that tough, but if we want to prevent something like this, we have to really think seriously about drastically reducing the number of guns in our society, and particularly -- this is an old Patrick Daniel Moynihan idea -- the number of bullets. It is very hard to control 300 million guns. The bullets are a little easier to control.

On this weekend’s broadcast of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” New York Times columnist David Brooks — who was once profoundly impressed with President Barack Obama — admitted he has soured on the president.“Well, you know, I think — well, I first think it has been the worst campaign I’ve ever covered,” Brooks said. “And I think they’re both ending on the same note they started. Obama’s doing a negative campaign. He’s got an ad out which is called ‘Remember,’ which is about Obama — which is about Romney, the plutocrat. It’s about the flip-flop what we’ve just heard on the...

As America’s strategic and political position in the Middle East continues to deteriorate, President Barack Obama’s political opponents have stepped up their claims that he is an ineffective leader on foreign policy. But New York Times columnist David Brooks isn’t convinced those attacks will work. During his weekly appearance on PBS’s “NewsHour” on Friday, Brooks suggested Obama deserves a pass for remaining calm throughout the crisis, which he said puts a kind of burden on his challenger, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

New York Times columnist David Brooks is the Eddie Haskell of the Fourth Estate. Like the two-faced sycophant in "Leave It to Beaver," Brooks indulges in excessive politeness while currying favor with political authority. He prides himself on an oily semblance of maturity and rational discourse. But the phony "conservative" back-stabber, who has spent the last four years slavering over Barack Obama like a One Direction groupie and trashing the tea party like an MSNBC junkie, isn't fooling anyone. Lately, Brooks has been given to dispensing passive-aggressive advice to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. His column this week titled "Thurston...

Before the barrage of ad homs begins, ask yourself this question: why did the Romneys let themselves get sucked into this kind of talk on Meet the Press (with David Brooks) on Sunday in the first place? Why is she saying that they (the Romneys) know what it is like to struggle, and then proffer her own personal health struggles as evidence that they know what it is like to struggle? Why are they letting themselves get sucked into this.... .... because the inevitable question surfaces and arises: voters will feel empathy towards Ann Romney, but they will ask how...

I’d like to provide a Brooks-esque reintroduction to our President, a man with an always shifting and mysterious background, so that the American people can make a fully informed decision on Nov. 6th. Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961 in Hawaii, Indonesia and Kenya, depending on whether he was applying for President of the United States, a college scholarship for international students, or for a book deal about his struggle with his racial identity. He burst forth from his mother’s womb in a cloud of smoke, which may or may not have been related to the half-empty pack...

The purpose of the Republican convention is to introduce America to the real Mitt Romney. Fortunately, I have spent hours researching this subject. I can provide you with the definitive biography and a unique look into the Byronic soul of the Republican nominee: Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947, in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Virginia and several other swing states. He emerged, hair first, believing in America, and especially its national parks. He was given the name Mitt, after the Roman god of mutual funds, and launched into the world with the lofty expectation that he would someday become...

Conservative author Glenn Beck on Sunday took to Twitter to blast New York Times columnist David Brooks for comments he made last year about the talk radio host's predictions concerning Egypt without President Hosni Mubarak. On PBS's Newshour last February, syndicated columnist Mark Shields mentioned Beck in a discussion about how people attending the CPAC convention viewed the goings-on in Egypt from a domestic political perspective: MARK SHIELDS, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, I think it is a lack of self-confidence, surefootedness. They didn`t know what they wanted to say. They weren`t sure. The only one who was really critical that I...

On Friday's PBS NewsHour, both "conservative" David Brooks and liberal Mark Shields thought this was a tough, tight election for Barack Obama. Shields said "it becomes a race about disqualifying, a campaign about disqualifying your opponent. And that's not attractive or appealing. It's not hope and change. It's blood and guts." But Brooks really felt Obama's pain: "So the president is obviously going to try. He is going to have. And to some extent, you have to feel sorry for him. This is in large degree not his fault. Things are happening way beyond his control. I don't believe a...

It might have sounded quite reasonable to David Brooks and his tightÂ circle of media friends but to most of the rest of us, using the term "ESPN Masculinity" to describe President Obama is just flat out hilarious. Brooks performs a comedy encore at the end of The ESPN Man story in the New York Times with his psychobabble description of Obama's "manliness." These supposed traits listed by Brooks are the reasons why he claims Obama remains somewhat popular despite a lousy economy. First, let us go right to the ESPN Man money quote: Normally, presidents look weak during periods...

Censorship: The pressure on Rush Limbaugh's advertisers is from a group that meets regularly with the White House and runs an Obama Super-PAC funded by unions. The group Media Matters acts like a lobbyist but is not registered as one. It operates in the shadows, outside congressional oversight and unaccountable to voters. This makes its collusion with the White House in the heat of a presidential race a serious matter worthy of investigation. Targeting Limbaugh, a staunch Republican, is no coincidence. If the Obama campaign can silence him, it can knock out the party's most powerful voice for firing up...

Silver doesn’t quite go so far as to say that it makes a brokered convention or a late-breaking establishment candidate likely, but I’m willing to go that far. There’s just no way the Republican establishment lets Gingrich become their nominee. As Andrew Sullivan pointed out today, you’re already seeing the anti-Gingrich mobilization among conservative thought leaders: Here’s George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Tom Coburn and Ann Coulter, just for starters. There’s this Politico story about all the Washington Republicans who hate Gingrich. Now, I think it’s more likely that this mobilization leads to a Romney win then...

Although many hope that members of the super committee will still reach an 11th hour deal on spending cuts before the November 23 deadline, New York Times columnist David Brooks doubts that any deal will ever be reached, now or in the future. Brooks suspects that United States is headed toward a fiscal crisis much like that of Greece. On Friday night’s broadcast of PBS’s “NewsHour,” Brooks said that despite the best possible groundwork being laid to reach a deal, a deal still couldn’t be made. “Yes, I mean, I’m hearing the exact same thing,” Brooks said. “I think the tragedy...

On Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” host Robert Siegel asked New York Times columnist David Brooks if the surfacing of sexual allegations from the late 1990s reported by Politico last week was “the beginning of the end” for businessman Herman Cain’s presidential run. “There was no beginning,” Brooks said. “He was a TV show that lasted for a little while. Let me stand up for elitist insiders — this is a job for professionals. Running for office is a job for professionals. Governing is a job for professionals. What Herman Cain did this — let’s leave aside the...

The United States is a country that has received many blessings, and once upon a time you could assume that Americans would come together to take advantage of them. But you can no... --snip-- The shale gas revolution challenges the coal industry, renders new nuclear plants uneconomic and changes the economics for the renewable energy companies, which are now much further from viability... --snip-- These problems are real, but not insurmountable. An exhaustive study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded, “With 20,000 shale wells drilled in the last 10 years, the environmental record of shale-gas development is for the...

New York Times columnist David Brooks often receives the scorn of many conservatives for taking positions contrary to ideology in the name of moderation and smart politics. But what did Brooks think of Herman Cain’s Web ad featuring his campaign manager smoking a cigarette at the end of it? Brooks’ impression might surprise some. In his regular appearance on Friday’s PBS “NewsHour,” host Judy Woodruff inquired about the ad and Brooks all but gave it two-thumbs up. “My heart melts for that smile,” Brooks said. “I just I like it. Everybody is going crazy, ‘Oh, it’s terrible.’ First of all,...

Despite Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain's precipitous rise in the polls, New York Times columnist David Brooks seems to think that the Republican presidential nomination is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s to lose. “It’s not a primary process. In the primary process you have several candidates and they go after each other. We don't have that. We have one plausible candidate and a bunch of other guys who are prepping him for the Obama onslaught. So, basically they attack him.”

Gail Collins: David, are you reconciled to the fact that Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican presidential nominee? David Brooks: Oh, I went through that phase a few weeks ago after the debate at the Reagan library. That’s the night I noticed Romney was the best candidate in the field. Since then I’ve noticed that he has given three debate performances that are better than any Barack Obama has given in his life. (Obama’s a better speechmaker, but Romney’s a better debater.) So now I’m settling into the idea that Romney might well be president. This will be...

David Brooks admitted in his column yesterday what conservatives have long suspected: He really, really liked Obama. In fact, he’s “a sap.” Here are ten examples of his sappiness over time. 10. David Brooks thought he had a wonderful plan for poverty reduction. Why? “A neighborhood is a moral ecosystem, and Obama, the former community organizer, seems to have a . . . feel for that.” 9. In a 2009 profile of Brooks in The New Republic, the columnist describes Obama as capable of holding his own as an intellectual: “He can do the jurisprudence, he can do the political...

Let us give credit for honesty (at least temporarily) to the New York Times "conservative" columnist, David Brooks, for his brutal self-recognition of a political flaw. Brooks flat out admits that he is a sap: Iâ€™m a sap, a specific kind of sap. Iâ€™m an Obama Sap. Brooks lays out in some detail his discovery of what most of the rest of us already knew; his extreme gullibility when it comes to believing Obama: When the president said the unemployed couldnâ€™t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration...

One thing’s for certain — Texas Gov. Rick Perry has made an impressive charge in the polls since he announced his candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination early this month. So how does a guy like Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, take him on? In an appearance on Friday’s “NewsHour” on PBS, New York Times columnist David Brooks explained that Romney will have to “do something aggressive” to remain formidable. “He has only been in the race a couple of weeks but the polls moved to a degree that is almost unprecedented. He has catapulted and catapulted...

By refusing to accept tax increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans are behaving like "fanatics," writes David Brooks of The New York Times. Anti-tax Republicans "have no sense of moral decency," he adds. They are "willing to stain their nation's honor" to "worship their idol." If this "deal of the century" goes down, as he calls the Barack Obama offer, "Republican fanaticism" will be the cause. "The GOP has become a cult" that has replaced reason with "feverish" and "cockamamie beliefs," writes Richard Cohen of The Washington Post. The Republican "presidential field (is) a virtual political...